FranceMichel Spingler/APA pair of elections dominated the news in France in 2012. French voters swung sharply to the left, having elected François Hollande president in May and handed a parliamentary majority to his Socialist party in June. The presidential result was dramatic in that Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative Gaullist president, became the first incumbent president in more than 30 years not to win a second term. The outcome was not, however, unexpected. Sarkozy faced not only the handicap of personal unpopularity but also a general anti-incumbent trend that was fueled by the ongoing crisis in the euro zone. This lasting crisis also limited the room for maneuvering by Hollande and his new government, which sought to break away from the austerity policy pursued by its predecessor. Hollande’s plans for growth were frustrated by deficit-reduction measures dictated by the EU’s new fiscal pact, and France continued to be plagued by a stagnant economy and high unemployment. The swing to the left betokened little change in foreign policy, though a shift away from Sarkozy’s enthusiastic support for the U.S. and NATO was reflected in Hollande’s decision to accelerate the French withdrawal from Afghanistan ahead of the pullout of U.S. troops. In the meantime, France raised its profile in the English-speaking world through its film The Artist, which became the first silent feature film to win an Academy Award for best picture since the inaugural award in 1929; the French star of the movie, Jean Dujardin, won the Oscar for best actor.

Domestic Policy

The year, in which policy was dominated by the euro-zone debt crisis, started off badly for France—and for Sarkozy—when in mid-January the country lost its AAA credit rating, a development that Sarkozy had earlier forecast would kill his reelection chances. By this time Hollande had already established himself as the front-runner in the polls. In 2011 Hollande had prevailed in his party’s presidential primary election, a U.S. practice that had been adopted by French Socialists in an attempt to consolidate their often-fractious members around a single candidate. Sarkozy delayed the official announcement of his reelection bid until mid-February in the hope of using the imminence of the election date to boost his popularity. Over the following two months, however, during the run-up to the second, decisive round of voting on May 6, opinion polls consistently put Hollande ahead of Sarkozy.

That Sarkozy proved to be his own worst enemy was reflected in his having scored an approval rating well below that of his prime minister, François Fillon, a rare occurrence for a French president. Some French considered Sarkozy vulgar; many more were confused by a hyperactivity that outstripped his undoubted ability. Despite having vaunted the value of his experience to steering France through the economic crisis, during the campaign he focused only sporadically on the economy. When he did so, it was more to steal support from the left with a proposed financial-transactions tax or from the far-right National Front with trade-protectionist rhetoric. By contrast, Hollande successfully presented himself as “Mr. Normal” and offered a calm, reassuring presidency. Even Hollande’s more radical policies, such as a 75% tax rate on incomes above €1 million (about $790,000), fit the country’s prevalent antibanker mood.

In the first round of voting on April 22, Hollande topped the field of 10 candidates, narrowly ahead of Sarkozy, with whom he advanced to the May 6 runoff. Unusual though it was for an incumbent president not to come out on top in the first round, more striking was the third-place showing of Marine Le Pen of the National Front (FN), who, with 17.9% of the vote, surpassed the percentage attained by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, when he finished second in the final round of the presidential election of 2002. She refused to endorse either of the two remaining candidates in the runoff but reserved particular scorn for Sarkozy’s efforts to steal her voters by having adopted an anti-immigrant stance. Immigration had been more of a campaign issue in March, when a French national of Algerian origin embarked on an eight-day shooting spree in and around Toulouse. In two separate incidents three French soldiers were killed and another seriously wounded. Days later the gunman attacked a Jewish school and killed three children and a rabbi in the worst school-related shooting in French history. The gunman, who claimed ties to al-Qaeda, was killed in a firefight with police after a day-and-a-half-long standoff at his apartment.

Further weakening Sarkozy’s electoral chances was the decision of François Bayrou, a centrist and one-time Gaullist ally of the president, to advise the 9% of first-round voters who had supported him to vote for Hollande in the second round. Hollande received additional support from another prominent Gaullist, former president Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy’s longtime rival. In the runoff Hollande won 51.64% of the vote and Sarkozy 48.36%. Following the election Sarkozy left politics to practice law, and Hollande went on to establish a new government with Jean-Marc Ayrault as prime minister. Of the 34 ministers appointed by Hollande, half were women.

In the two rounds of parliamentary elections on June 10 and 17, the Socialists successfully rode Hollande’s coattails. They gained 94 seats to reach a total of 280 seats and, with allied parties, attained a clear majority in the 577-seat National Assembly. The conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party shed 119 seats, to drop to a total of 194 seats. In the November contest to succeed Sarkozy as UMP leader, Fillon narrowly lost to Jean-François Copé. Fillon complained that overseas votes that would have given him victory had not been counted. Each then accused the other of cheating. The two finally agreed on a compromise, with Copé staying UMP president until a fresh election in autumn 2013. The far-right National Front was, as often in the past, squeezed out in the first-past-the-post single-constituency system. Marine Le Pen failed to win a seat, but her 22-year-old niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, was one of two new FN deputies. However, a notable Socialist loss was Ségolène Royal, former partner of Hollande, mother of his four children, and the party’s presidential standard-bearer in 2007. She lost out to an unofficial Socialist candidate, who got a “tweeted” message of support from Hollande’s current companion, Valérie Trierweiler.

Once in office, Hollande implemented his proposed 75% "millionaires’ tax," but the measure was overturned by the Constitutional Council on December 29. Hollande vowed to resubmit an amended version of the tax in 2013.

Foreign Policy

France’s most preoccupying foreign policy issue was also a domestic matter—resolution of the euro-zone crisis. Immediately after his inauguration on May 15, Hollande flew to Berlin to discuss with German Chancellor Angela Merkel his earlier campaign pledge to factor growth into the fiscal compact that had been signed by 25 EU states in March. At subsequent EU summits Hollande obtained German agreement to use some EU funds for modest stimulus spending. This concession came in return for France’s having pledged to commit to reduce its public deficit to 4.5% in 2012 and to 3% in 2013. To try to achieve this, the government raised taxes and cut spending by a total of €30 billion in its budget plan for 2013. However, additional German demands for greater central control over euro-zone country budgets, seen as conditions of German acceptance of any debt-sharing agreements, threatened to reopen the French Socialists’ split over European integration. The foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, and the European affairs minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, had sided against Hollande in a 2005 referendum campaign over the proposed EU constitution.

Hollande had more freedom to carry out another foreign-policy campaign pledge. Following the killing of four French soldiers by a rogue Afghan soldier, Sarkozy had announced that all French soldiers would be pulled out of Afghanistan by the end of 2013. During the campaign, Hollande said that he would complete total withdrawal by the end of 2012, although he later applied that timeline only to French combat troops. Shortly after his election, he discussed this plan with U.S. Pres. Barack Obama and with other NATO allies. He then flew on to visit French troops in Afghanistan. The accelerated French withdrawal met with acquiescence, if not approval, from other allies who all planned to quit Afghanistan in 2014.

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